Evergreen Content, YouTube, and Money

I went to see Modest Mouse play at Webster Hall on Nov 15th last year. I uploaded four videos I shot that night to YouTube. They’ve all had at least a thousand views, but one of them, the song Bukowski, has had 2,500 views to date.

I put a vidmeter on this particular video last month and each day I get an email telling me how many people viewed the video in the prior 24 hours. It’s always been at least 10 views and some days I get as many as 50 views. The average seems to be around 20 views per day.

It got me thinking about this kind of evergreen content that keeps getting viewed day after day, week after week. What’s that worth? To me, to YouTube, to the band?

Let’s start with YouTube. Let’s say they do implement the 3 second pre-roll and let’s say they charge a $2 cpm for a three second pre-roll. Then my Bukowski video could earn YouTube about $15 per year. And I might get 60 percent of that, or close to $10/year.

That’s not a lot of money, but if you uploaded four videos of every show you went to and if you went to one live show a week every year, then you could be making $2000 a year off YouTube advertisements. That’s enough to pay for the tickets to the shows.

What’s this worth to the band? Well if a three second pre-roll is worth a $2cpm, then a four minute video showcasing how awesome they are in concert is probably worth a lot more. Maybe a $10 cpm?

Which means my video is already worth $25 to Modest Mouse and will be worth something like $75 per year. That’s more than they made from the ticket I bought to their show.